Conquered Closet: Wild Ink's Wonderful Laundry

Welcome back to Rebekah of Wild Ink Press. You might remember her aMAZing bathroom renovation from a while back (easily one of my favorites). She is back today to show us how she made over her laundry room into a simply charming spot.



Hello, Brooklyn Limestoners! When Stefanie mentioned on twitter last week that she was looking for a couple of guests posting before-and-afters, I thought right away of my newly refreshed laundry room, and she graciously accepted my suggestion. Thanks for having me back again, Stefanie.

Little did I know what I was getting into - that a laundry room might be the MOST difficult room in the entire house to photograph, unless you are either a magician or own your body-weight in professional photography gear!! I have neither, so you'll have to excuse the fact that you can never see all of the room at once. It's a pretty snug little space.

A bit of background: our home is a nice custom house built in the 1990's, and we love its location (by an organic flower farm, a block away from almond orchards, but still biking distance to downtown) in Chico, California. Plus it has great bones, and a fantastic letterpress studio in the back. But the overall interior? Builder beige, or as I like to say, builder blah. We've been slowly remodeling from top to bottom to make it ours, and the most recently I gave the laundry room a refresh on a small budget.

This is thoroughly shameful, but here's the before:



Yes, all that laundry and piles of junk are mine. I hate laundry. H-A-T-E. Part of the inspiration for the remodel was hoping that a beautiful space would make my obsessive nature want to keep it clean - and hence get the laundry done. Backward thinking, I know. The room had white walls, 12" beige tiles with brown grout, and one long flourescent tube light fixture. This is the other side of the room (just imagine me crouched against the washer to take this photo):



You get the idea. Pretty blah. I pinned to this board on Pinterest for inspiration and ideas, and then went to work!

Here's what I ended up with:



I was doing this refresh on a dime, so sadly, couldn't replace the tile floor with the beautiful penny tile I wanted to use. Instead, I covered most of the floor with a rug - the Andalusia Dhurrie from West Elm. I mixed my own shade of light grey paint from leftover cans we had (our house has over 15 shades of grey paint throughout).

The butcher block is from Ikea (unfinished oak), my husband Matt cut it down and installed it above the new washer/dryer as a beautiful and handy counter top. I decanted all of my laundry detergents - I love them so much better this way!! Easier to use and more lovely to look at:



On the wall I clothes-pinned vintage receipts (from etsy) onto a ribbon and attached it to the wall with a glue dot. I love looking at the little sundries people purchased back then:




I have a teeeny little dish (originally part of our sushi set) for things I find in pockets...



Mostly loose change, although the occasional dead bug works its way in too (my four year old loves to squash bugs, I'm working on it).

I reused all of our brass fixtures, spray painting them oil-rubbed bronze. This towel I bought on etsy, it was love at first sight:



Mr. Darcy, aauugh.

And it would be unfair if I didn't mention that one of the biggest inspirations of the new laundry room is the new washer and dryer. I've never had laundry appliances new before - this was big! I researched and got a screaming good deal at Sears (plus coupon plus a rebate), although I don't really recommend them because the entire process was a ton of hassle. Still, all's well that ends well:




That's pretty much it! It's great to have a clean laundry room in 2011!! If you want to get the scoop on cost-break-down and installation process (too boring for this before and after!) you can find it on my little blog here. Thanks again for letting me share, Stefanie!